Juliet of the Spirits

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I like to do a self portrait every so often as a way of touching base with myself as far as personal growth goes, but lately I've been hard pressed for concepts that really appealed to me. Then I rediscovered Albrecht Durer's beautiful, and very famous, self portrait which actually turned into the inspiration for the pose of this piece.

One thing I always liked about that portrait of his was how it was actually quite controversial for his time. In those days, the only figures it was acceptable to paint facing forward were religious figures, such as Jesus or the Virgin Mary. Other portraits were always painted in profile or at an angle... never dead on. For Durer to paint himself in such a pose was really quite scandalous, not to mention blasphemous.

Thinking about that painting brought my thoughts back to a concept that I as an ever-so-benevolently vain artist love to contemplate and play with from time to time. That of the artist as God. If I created my characters, am I God to them in the same way that my higher power of choice might be God to me? It certainly does make a logical kind of sense, doesn't it. So there you have the story behind the pose.

The scorpion crawling on my hand is a reference to something in my birth chart -- position of the north node of the moon. The north node is said to govern your karmic life path in this lifetime, as well as the lessons you are meant to be trying to embrace this time around. Mine is in Scorpio, and I have been consciously trying to embrace the lessons of Scorpio -- those of constant transformation and leadership to name just two. I think I'm making progress, even if I do say so myself, and so I thought I'd include the scorpion to commemorate that.

The title is a reference to song by The B-52's that I was listening to a lot when I first started this painting. It's a lovely song, and one I feel quite attached to, and seems to me to be about a woman who is growing in her own way, too. Having listened to it so constantly during the making of this piece, I feel very strongly that it is part of it without a doubt -- especially since I very strongly see Juliet in me.

Since this is a self portrait, the reference for the figure is obviously one of my own resources. The stock used for the scorpion and the brick background come from shutterstock.com.